Mark Joseph Stern is suitably woke.
He writes for Slate. He’s a legal analyst who uses the term “conversion therapy” when discussing any sort of therapy that might deal with someone’s discomfort over same-sex desire or gender dysphoria from a religious perspective. He wrote an article titled, “How in the World Was the Supreme Court’s Awful Conversion Therapy Ruling 8–1?”
He still managed to get pilloried on Bluesky, the leftist alternative to X where they eat their own via increasingly impossible purity tests.
Now, in case you missed this “awful conversion therapy ruling,” every justice aside from Ketanji Brown Jackson (natch) found in a Wednesday decision that a lower court did not apply appropriate scrutiny to a Colorado law that banned, among other things, talk therapy that might deal with people struggling with same-sex attraction or gender identity from a religiously orthodox perspective.
Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor, challenged the 2019 statute on First Amendment grounds. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the law “censors speech based on viewpoint” and that a lower court must apply strict scrutiny, or the most exacting constitutional standard, to examining the law and what it covers.
“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same,” Gorsuch wrote.
“But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
Stern, in his write-up of the case in Slate, called the decision “profound hypocrisy masquerading as principle,” using a circular appeal to authority, among other arguments.
Almost 30 states have curbed or outlawed “therapy” that seeks to change minors’ sexual orientation or gender identity—that is, to make them stop being gay, bisexual, or transgender. These measures take the form of professional licensure rules, subjecting therapists to fines (and eventually loss of license) if they try to “turn” an LGBTQ+ minor straight or cisgender. Nonprofessional counselors, including family and clergy, can still engage in this conduct, as can professional counselors outside of their paid practice. Every major American medical association to consider this issue has come out in opposition to “conversion therapy” for youth and endorsed its prohibition. …
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court sided against Colorado, reversing the appeals court’s decision. Writing for every justice but Jackson, Gorsuch declared that Chiles’ talk therapy is “the quintessential form of protected speech.” He rejected the state’s argument that speech carries fewer First Amendment protections when delivered as a medical treatment. Chiles’ therapy is not conduct at all, Gorsuch wrote, but pure “expression.” And Colorado’s law censors that expression “based on viewpoint,” allowing her to affirm LGBTQ+ patients’ identities but not to critique or reject them. Thus, the state “seeks to silence a viewpoint she wishes to express.” This kind of “viewpoint discrimination,” Gorsuch concluded, is “presumptively unconstitutional,” and must survive strict scrutiny, meaning it is “narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.”
However, he did note that Gorsuch did not ” declare that Colorado’s law does not pass strict scrutiny and therefore violates the First Amendment” but “walked right up to that point, he stepped back, and sent the case back down to the appeals court, directing it to apply the test instead. He strongly implied that the Colorado ban, and others like it, would not survive this review ‘as applied’ to talk therapy. But he left the question open for the appeals court to answer.”
And that’s where his problem began on Bluesky. See, he also pointed this out on the left-bubble app: “This decision applies only to talk therapy, not forms of ‘conversion therapy’ that involve physical interventions (which are really abuse),” he wrote. “It does not strike down Colorado’s law on its face. Actually, it does not invalidate anything—it just holds that this kind of law is subject to strict scrutiny.”
Which was true. And the reactions were, uh, less than stellar to the truth:
WARNING: The following posts contain vulgar language that some readers will find offensive.
The rage to which Mark Joseph Stern was subjected over his characterization of various forms of conversion therapy: pic.twitter.com/BOj8RTwJCc
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 31, 2026
“As someone who went through conversion talk therapy I’d kindly like to show Mark to the nearest cliff’s edge,” wrote one user.
“Mark out here thinks that my parents abusing, raping, and killing me in the process of ‘their talking’ is fine because freeze peach or some liberal s***,” said another, who apparently thinks talking can kill and/or rape you.
“Mark, ‘really abuse’ is gonna be all your [sic] known for now. Your epitaph,” one of the nicer (if not entirely grammatically correct) responses read.
Stern tried to defend himself, which is seldom a good decision with this crowd:
Mark Joseph Stern defends himself: pic.twitter.com/izijC125lM
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 31, 2026
But he finally conceded that the woke rabblement had won.
“FYI: I am going to stop summarizing Supreme Court decisions on here as they come down. One comment has been plucked out of context of all my reporting, misread, and used as the basis of a mean-spirited pile-on. I am not going to subject myself to this. If this was your goal, then congratulations,” he wrote.
Mark Joseph Stern, who reports on legal news for Slate through a strictly liberal lens, routinely weighing in that liberal decisions are invariably correct, has nevertheless been subjected to brutal purity-test pile-ons on Bluesky and has resolved to dial back his presence there. pic.twitter.com/7MCP9bAnI1
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 31, 2026
NARRATOR: “That was, in fact, their goal.”
You see, Bluesky is not about thoughtful discussion among a left-leaning crowd. It’s a crazy 30-man pro-wrestling free-for-all, and the craziest heel always wins. Stern, for all his daftness, is not that crazy — not, at least, by the standards of Bluesky, which chases off anyone who won’t join the primal fray or appease it.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk taking over Twitter was the real crisis in short-form political journalism on social media. Sure, Jan.
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